Sunday

Sep 30, 2012 at 12:01 AM

Some things are just meant to be. You can try to buck the trend. You can try to reverse fortune or go against the grain, but karma - if you are lucky - or destiny will always catch up with you. And sometimes that's a good thing.

Just ask David Udinsky.

Udinsky grew up in the plumbing business. In 1905 his grandfather, Sam Adler, started Liberty Plumbing and Pipe Supply on Liberty Street. Eventually his mother, Sylvia, his aunt, Betty Nathan and Udinsky's father, Burton, took over the business. By 10, Udinsky knew a valve from a gauge from a fitting. He knew hoses. And probably somewhere in his consciousness he knew he had a job when he got older. Plumbing supplies, he figured, were not going anywhere.

But this kid also knew bikes. At 13, when he wasn't at the family business or riding his bike or going to school, Udinsky was working at Marlin's Store for Homes, a hardware store at the corner of Habersham and 60th streets, a few blocks from his home. They hired him to assemble bikes, mostly Schwinn.

He was good at his job, so good that a year later he got a phone call from a legitimate bike shop in town, the Yellow Jersey Cyclery, at the corner of 37th Street and Waters Avenue. They wanted to hire him to work on the racing bikes they were importing from Belgium and France and Italy.

They also sold cycling shorts, jerseys and helmets, "things you'd have to go to New York for," he said. "It was a very cool store."

To sweeten the deal - and to advertise the business and give Udinsky a way to get to work - the shop offered to give him a 10-speed Libertas bike from Belgium; this at a time when 10-speed bikes were a rarity.

Soon after he started working there, the shop moved south to 67th Street and Waters. By this time, Udinsky and others had started the Wheelman, a group that still exists, and started racing at Hunter Army Airfield.

But the rest of his life caught up to him. He went to college and when he finished up at Armstrong Atlantic State University he took over the family business on Liberty Street.

Twenty years later, the plumbing business wasn't looking so hot. The economy was souring. Udinsky started to lose energy for the business.

"I was talking to my wife one day and I said I've got to find something else to do," Udinsky said. "Finally I said, 'I've got it. Bikes.' She looked at me for a while and said, 'Well, you've always loved them. You can't do any worse than we're doing now."

His accountant was less optimistic.

"He said, 'Do you know how many bikes you'll have to sell to make a living?'"

While continuing to run the plumbing business, he started talking to reps, lining up bikes, looking for a space. A year before he had a space, he registered the name Perry Rubber.

"The Paris-Roubaix is the longest single stage ride in the Tour de France," he said. "It's 140 miles long and rough, worse than River Street. Perry Rubber was my spin on that ride."

In a bit of synchronicity and irony, Udinsky had no idea he would be opening his bike shop on Bull Street and Perry Lane, in a space previously occupied by Savannah Art Works.

Two and a half years later, he loves going to work, and recently he was recognized at one of the top bike retailers in the country.

The best thing is, he said, you never know who is going to walk through the door.

Take the time someone told Udinsky about his girlfriend's mother who wanted to sell a bike.

"The woman called me and I said bring it in," Udinsky said.

As soon as she came through the door, Udinsky recognized the woman as someone he had gone to school with. But more importantly he recognized the bike.

"I screamed, 'It's the yellow Clive Stuart,'" he said. "I remembered that exact bike because when I worked at the Yellow Jersey Cyclery we had ordered it. At the time I thought it was the most beautiful bike I had ever seen."

Udinsky bought it from her, fixed it up and now keeps it in his shop for sentimental reasons.

"Things like this happen all the time," he said. "The move has changed my life," he said. "I caught it at just the right time."